Data storage utilization is continually increasing, causing the proliferation of storage systems in data centers. To protect information from being corrupted, backup operations are performed periodically. These backup operations may rely on previous backup files through the generation of an incremental backup file or may be completely independent through the generation of a completely new full backup file without reference to previous backup files.
Under an incremental backup approach, an incremental backup file is generated which includes a linkage to a parent file (i.e., the last incremental or full backup) and a set of delta values representing the changes between the last backup and the current state of the target volume. Although this incremental technique may achieve quick backup file generation, each incremental file is intrinsically linked to a parent file. This linkage creates a number of inefficiencies, including the need to clone or copy the parent file along with the incremental file during cloning operations. Further, deleting incremental files is not possible as this deletion may break the chain of subsequent incremental backups. Additionally, although incremental backup files may provide a quick approach to backing-up a target volume, periodically a full backup may be necessary.
Under a full backup approach, a single backup file is generated that represents the contents of the full target volume. Since the full backup represents the contents of the entirety of the target volume, the time needed to copy data to the full backup file may be exceeding long.